20 comments:

The best 'screw you' moments was when Rob (Conley) was running a mini campaign and we were on the front line of a war with an ancient race that 'woke up'. We fount and battle their forces and it nearly cost us every man. We won. Then more came many more. Rob said that first battle was with the scouting party. I think its the first time I had a high level character hide and hope.

The kind of traps where by the time the spikes and the fourth giant iridium ball bearing have taken down all the henchmen and the donkeys and the Magic-User, and everyone else has been bounced around by poisoned rubber paddles coming out of the walls, and it slowly dawns on the players that this trap is just a big horrible pinball machine - you look up and the expressions on their faces are a mixture of pity and revulsion.

Yeah I've read a Grimtooth book or two. I could only bear to use a couple of the ideas though, and even then only in a funhouse dungeon like Undermountain.

Actually I think of the Disenchanter. I had a DM who would insist on, once every campaign, having Disenchanters noodle their little snouts out from holes in the wall and drain a bunch of stuff, then scamper off with bellies full of magic.

There's plenty in C1 that qualifies here, I think, but the encounter with the vampire, Tloques Popolocas trumps them all. Even if a party successfully dispatches him — which would require an awful lot of luck if you're using the tournament pregens — they've probably wasted so much time doing so that they'll shortly cack from the toxic fumes in the lower levels beneath the shrine.

So I suppose saying "S1" is a little too obvious? :P My runner-up would be a one-level dungeon I made up in '83 that had nothing in it but traps. I used it as sort of an experiment to see just how savvy a player my brother-in-law (my only player at the time) was. One acronym: TPK.

Since that probably doesn't count either, I'll probably have to go with Goodman's "Crypt of the Devil Lich."

There's a bit at the end of Horror on the Orient Express, for Call of Cthulhu, where the character closest to the centre of some magic circle is possessed (and killed) by Nyarlathotep, with no warning at all. Now, you might argue that you shouldn't be going anywhere near a magic circle in CoC, let alone the centre, but it still strikes me as harsh! Particularly because the "trap" is plot-mandated, which is what lifts it beyond mere player stupidity.

Rahasia had this one trap where if you fail your save you charge towards an illusion of treasure pile. You don't simply believe the illusion to be true but you are mandated to run towards at it like an idiot, and *bonk* take heavy damage from running to a wall.

I have theory the part about running towards the treasure like idiot was added by the frustrated author because every sane player would be extremely cautious anyway about "treasure" just lying around believing it to be true or not.

Good trap humiliates players for bad choises, this one is clearly just for shit and giggles.